ALBEAUTIFUL MIND By Akiva Goldsman Based on the biography by Sylvia Nassar REV. 8/11/2000i 4 FADE IN ON: EXT.-NORTH AMERICA-1947-DAY The way the world looks to God. The odd puzzle geometry of sea and land pieced together as if by unseen design. CLOSER VAN NEUMANN (OVER) Mathematicians won the war... EXT.-NEW JERSEY-1947-DAY Alternating squares of lawn and lot, criss-crossing highways, a game board of cement and grass. CLOSER STILL. VAN NEUMANN (OVER) Mathematicians broke the Japanese codes and built the A-bomb... EXT.-PRINCETON UNIVERSITY-DAY Rows of heads. PUSH IN on a single FACE looking skyward, as if he can see us. Uncommcnly handsome. Piercing blue eyes. JOHN NASH. VAN NEUMANN (OVER) Mathematicians like you... TRACK over the all male students to the head of the common. JOHN VAN NEUMANN, is delivering the matriculation speech. VAN NEUMANN But peace’s flame burns all too briefly. Atomic weapons are within Stalin’s reach. You are the vanguard of democracy and freedom. Today, we bequeath America’s future into your able hands. Welcome to Princeton. The crowd erupts in APPLAUSE. EXT. -PRINCETON- PRESIDENT’ S RECEPTION Sunlight dapples the flickering autumn leaves. Students in formal dress mill. FIND two STUDENTS standing at a bar, sipping martinis. 2WEIFEL is tall and wiry, like a scarecrow made of skin. SHAPELY is elder, maybe 26, and handsome. Both watch someone in the crowd. SHAPELY Milnor's gonna get the brass ring if it kills him.ae 2WEIFEL He's used to pretty metal. (taps his teeth) Silver spoon. REVERSE on the subject of thei musings. A student with shaggy hair and fiercely intelligent eyes is pumping hands. MARTIN MILNOR. ZWEIFEL It’s not enough he won the Carnegie scholarship. SHAPELY Has to have it all for himself. CAMERA DRIFTS to a third figure standing near them at the bar. John Nash can’t help but overhear their conversation. Zweifel notices. 2WEIFEL rst time the Carnegie prize has been split. Now Milnor’s all bent. Nash nods, looks again at the young man working the crowd SHAPELY He's set his sights on the new military think tank at RAND. 2WEIFEL They only recruit the best brain from each class. SHAPELY Milnor’s used to being picked first. (extends his hand) shapely. Symbol Cryptography. 2WEIFEL Shapes broke a Jap code. Helped rid . the world of Fascism. Least that’s what he tells the girls. (extends his hand) Qweifel. Atomic physics. And you are... Just then a third FELLOW runs up. Breathless, clever face that resembles his name. FOX. FOX am 1 late? 4 Zweifel and Shapely exchange a look. He’s always late.